Clay Shirky, social interaction expert, explores how people are using media to interact with others in novel ways. The Internet is good at group forming, whereas the TV is good for broadcast. He explores social effects that are relevant to game design. Gamers have an enormous desire, when playing games, to create media and interact / chat with each other.
In this keynote address at the Games for Change Conference, Clay talks less about the games and more about the players, the social effects that are relevant to game design. How do the players bring the meaning of the games into the environment? The content of the game is in the game but the content of the play is in the players.
Clay Shirky (Professor in NYU’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program – ITP)
Clay Shirky has been described by Wired Magazine as “a consistently prescient voice†on technology’s social affects. His broad and insightful vision has explored everything from blogs to peer-to-peer networks. Shirky’s writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, and he has been heard on both the BBC and NPR. He is currently teaching in NYU’s department of Interactive Telecommunications.
Clay divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. His consulting practice is focused on the rise of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, web services, and wireless networks, and on the social software that takes advantage of this infrastructure. Clients have included Nokia, GBN, the Library of Congress, MITRE, Connecting for Health, and the BBC.
In addition to his consulting work, Mr. Shirky is an adjunct professor in NYU’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), where he teaches courses on the interrelated effects of social and technological network topology – how our networks shape culture and vice-versa.
